Executor

When was the Executor in service? TFU would have us believe it was around before ANH, but according to canon so far, it was built shortly after ANH. What's the retcon on this one?

 

In most sources, starting with Darth Vader Strikes, the Executor was only built after Yavin. Some games, like Star Wars: X-wing, had it around before Yavin and was considered a non-canon depiction.

I'm not sure when the big shift started, but with TFU, we have the unfinished Executor being used as a base for Vader and Marek. It's actually common for big construction projects to be utilized before completion, both Jerec's Vengeance (The Dark Forces Saga) and the Eclipse (Byss and the Core Worlds) were used as space stations/headquarters during their construction.

The Eclipse itself went through several retcons, with it now being begun around the Battle of Yavin (Forces of Corruption) and used in a climactic battle at the end of the game, right after Endor (in an unfinished state, of course).
Then there's the Sovereign-class, which The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia now says began construction some years before the return of Palpatine, because Zsinj is said to have used the lead ship. Pretty cool retcon, and now made more believable because even a third-rate non-Imperial warlord like Tyber Zann can highjack the Eclipse, so why not something smaller like the Sovereign?

 

This is a really nasty continuity question, with lots of contradictory answers:

1.) Darth Vader Strikes and Revenge of the Jedi (1981-3) have the Executor under construction at Fondor after Yavin, and subsequently used by Vader to break the siege of the Rebel base. These are now dated around five months after ANH, but I don't know when that date originated.

2.) Scoundrel's Luck (1990) has the Executor serving as Vader's flagship during the hunt to recover him and his TIE/X1 after Yavin; by implication, it was his flagship already before the battle using this chronology.

3.) Star Wars: X-Wing (1993) depicts an SSD in a cutscene image before the Battle of Yavin.

4.) Star Wars Adventure Journal #12 (1997) has Executor entering service at Kuat on precisely 23rd of 10th, 2 ABY, to hunt down the new Rebel base; the Battle of Hoth is reported just over half a year later, on 9th of 6th, 3 ABY.

5.) Star Wars Manga (2006) has Palpatine hand the completed Executor to Vader on Coruscant, after Yavin.

6.) The Force Unleashed (2008) has Executor substantially complete by 3 BBY, but undergoing continued construction and fitting-out in the Scarl system.

There are at least THREE separate narratives here:

A. The Executor was constructed and in service as Vader's flagship before Yavin: 2, 3, and possibly 6. This isn't as unusual an idea as it seems.

B. The Executor was constructed immediately after Yavin, and given to Vader to kick the Rebels off Yavin: 1, and probably 5.

C. The Executor was constructed years after Yavin, and given to Vader to find the Rebels on Hoth: 4.

Quite apart from the direct contradictions and varying dates implied, there are major continuity questions involved with a large number of the supporting details.

For example, how can the siege of Yavin end five months after Yavin, when the discovery of Hoth in Iceworld depends on the events in Shadow Stalker, which is probably significantly earlier, and in turn significantly post-dates (IIRC by six months) The Return of Ben Kenobi... itself featuring the Executor, nearly ready to join the siege of Yavin 4!

And how can Governor-General Nox Vellam be fighting an undeclared civil war with Vader's forces during the operation to recover his TIE, and yet be Admiral Griff's nominal commanding Moff during the subsequent blockade of Yavin?

How do we reconcile Scoundrel's Luck with The Savage Heart, which has a different story of Vader's recovery after Yavin? Wookieepedia seems to square the story by having Vader accompany the stormtrooper unit that recovers his TIE, then deciding to take a looooong nap in the cockpit afterwards! Is that based on something canon?!

Then we have to assume that the Admiral Ozzel commanding the Executor in Scoundrel's Luck (and the one who presided at Han's court-martial!) was merely a relative of the later Admiral Ozzel, who was then just captain of the ISD Reprisal in Shelsa sector, as shown in Allegiance; but that can't save the contradiction between Allegiance, in which Vader is already using Ex, and SWAJ #12, which has Admiral Ozzel as a prominent Admiral already when Executor enters service.



The easiest solution is probably to blame the contradictions on flow-walking.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

What do these sources mean by "built after Yavin", does that mean that construction started or finished at that time? If it means finished, there's no problem with The Force Unleashed. It just means that Super Star Destroyers can take a long time to build. Fondor was a small shipyard so maybe they couldn't keep up with their own project, causing the later Executor-class ships to be built by Kuat Drive Yards.

The other possible retcon is that one of the "Executors" is actually Lusyanka and that's how the Executor can be "finished" twice. Kuat finishes Lusyanka first in order to prove to the Empire that they should have the remaining Super Star Destroyer contracts. The Executor is promised to Vader so he's lent the Lusyanka until the Executor is completed but isn't allowed to use it in a conflict that might damage it. Then Executor is finished, the Lusyanka is burried on Coruscant and Vader uses the Executor to break the siege of Yavin.

 

We've heard of the Lusankya being built simultaneously with the Executor. It was at least in Coruscant and the Core Worlds. One was at Fondor (Executor), the other at Kuat (Lusankya).

 

IIRC, Abel made a retcon for Scoundrel's Luck in one of his articles (something better than Vader falling asleep, I think ), but I forget which one. If it was one of the online ones, it's probably lost in limbo...

 

That doesn't mean they were finished and launched at the same time. SotG 07 claims they were though (at least, that their keels and final rivets were finished at the same time which is probably just a turn of phrase for "started and finished"). It was just a thought.

 

It's possible that there was more than one Executor. If a planet thought Vader's personal flagship was orbiting them that could be hugely demoralising or inspirational for the population depending on whose side you were on. It's the sort of thing the Imperials would do. Did Vader ever have any bodydoubles like Saddam Hussain or Churchill? They could have gone along for the ride too.

 

To clear two things up:
1) There is more than one Executor. One ends up becoming Lusankya (the one mentioned in the AJ article), and the other, well, stays Executor.
We see the unveiling ceremony in Paul Danner's short story "Small Favors" (which appeared in the same issue as the Galaxywide NewsNets article entitled ?Super Star Destroyer Executor unveiled in Kuat Ceremony.? The article is dated 37:10:23, which would place this story some 35 (after converting the Coruscant calendar to a 12 months calendar) months after the Battle of Yavin (that is, if we take the dating at face value, which can't be done with all of the GNN dates). However, in Isard?s Revenge, Ysanne Isard tells Wedge Antilles that the Lusankya (in fact, the Kuat Shipyards Executor seen in "Small Favors") was built before the Fondor Executor that Vader tools around in beginning six months ABY. Isard might in fact be telling the truth as the protagonist of "Small Favors," Cryle Cavv, is said to be 47 in his bio at the end of the story, and 65 in ?Two For One,? a story set after The New Rebellion, with 18 years between the stories (and meaning the Lusankya/Executor was unveiled in the first year after the Battle of Yavin, not the 3rd).

2) the bit about Vader "sleeping" is, I think, an attempt to retcon "The Savage Heart," Abel's "Vader Tech" article, and where we find Vader in Scoundrel's Luck. Vader IS comatose in Scoundrel's Luck , something he obviously is not at the end of "Savage Heart," so something happened. Abel's article claimes that Captain Sadorra (who is seen escorting Vader and his burnt out Tie X1 in Scoundrel's Luck) assisted Vader in retrieving his Tie X1 from Vaal. From there, we have to factor in Vader's appearances in "The Imperial Spy," and possibly the coming Rebel Force books. As we know Vellam was gunning for Vader at the time of Scoundrel's Luck, so to me this seems like as good a retcon as any.

 

you mean several Executors as double? nice thought... do they have several sizes as well? that'll solve another issue well then

 

But only if you get captured by the Empire, which is a decidedly non-canon depiction as far as Keyan Farlander's personal history goes.

 

Heh, remember that this is the Empire we're discussing so the sizing'll go:

Large
Extra Large
XXL
XXXL
XXXXL
XXXXXL

 

Until a few years ago, my personal interpretation was that you had the 8km Super class and the longer Executor class. (Though I'm not completely sure that would work with BFC, it would solve most of the other inconsistencies up to that point.)

But now that Saxton's fallible scaling is canon, that won't work.

 

From the Ask Lobot Q&A thingy in the latest Star Wars Insider (# 107, page 69)

Q: How can the Executor appear in spaceworthy form in The Force Unleashed when its construction was not completed until after the Battle of Yavin?
A: The Executor is several years from completion at the time of The Force Unleashed. Initially built in complete secrecy by droids in a secure facility not far from Fondor, the ship was transferred to the Fondor shipyards for its final stages of construction.

 

The novel Death Star talks about Super-class SDs that are about 10-12 km long, with one heavy battery, while the Executors had multiple. The original SOTG talked about both 12,8km SSDs and had the Executor's profile with an 8km tag. The Dawn of Defiance rpg campaign has a prototype vessel at 12km, that went on to inspire the Executor-class.

There's also some sources that talk about 8km SSDs that aren't readily connected with the Executor-class, so there's a lot of possibilities. I'm sure there's 6km, 8km etc. vessels out there, as well as the ones established. Even the small (relatively) ships escorting the Eclipse in Dark Empire, were called SSDs in the radio drama version. They were at least 4km, judging by a side-by-side panel with the Eclipse.

I just don't get the obsession with making everything into one single class, whether Star Destroyer or Super Star Destroyer. It's silly that people just switch between SSD and star dreadnaught, when there's more than one type of SSD. One name didn't change to another, that's the point of making SSD a slang term for more than one shiptype in the first place.

 

It probably comes from how, originally, much of the ships were intended to be the same as the Executor. Both for "visual identification" reasons on the part of readers, as well as the fact that it doesn't make much sense for the Empire to have more SSD designs than it does standard Star Destroyers.

 

Make sense to who, readers or in-universe? This is an Empire that comes up with a new Death Star replacement every other season. I also fail to see why other franchises have many different designs in fictional fleets without a complaining fanbase.

Last I checked, there were at least 8 known Star Destroyer classes (Victory I and II, Imperial I and II, Tector, Venator, Gladiator, the thing in TFU), and at least 10 different SSD designs (Executor, Eclipse, Sovereign, Praetor, 12km prototype, Jerec's Vengeance, Giel's flagship, the Eclipse's escorts, at least one type of Star Cruiser, at least one type of KDY Star Battlecruiser) at some point in the history of the Galactic Empire.

Also taking into account the old Imperial Sourcebook where each sector were handed their own mobile ship-construction docks and left to their own devices. Having regional variance in design is perfectly logical, given the nature and resources of the Empire. If a local Moff wants a bigger, shinier command ship, that's possible under the system. It's not necessary to add to some kind of overall mandate that everyone has to follow, just because Moff Not-Compensating-For-Anything wants his warships to look different or be bigger than the neighbour's.

 

The dates of the Executor seem to fluctuate. However, it really is tied to the storyline of the assault on Yavin, which was delayed until its completion. While earlier sources (like Complete Locations) claim the line began after Yavin, this is clearly not the case now. Both TFU and Death Star show the class being worked on prior to ANH. The "captured by the Empire" appearance from X-Wing can be chalked up to an anachronism. It's been long established that they take a while to complete - by the Battle of Hoth, only five Executors (including the Lusankya) were completed. And, as Insider has made clear there's no real problem with the unfinished Executor being around in TFU.
Stackpole meant for the Lusankya to be the retcon for the KDY-Executor; he may have forgotten the date that the official unveiling was.

 

Didn't Complete Locations (which copied text from Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy) simply say the class was rushed into production because of the Death Star's destruction? Nothing says the Executor wasn't already undergoing construction beforehand, so there's no contradiction there.

There's also a problem with identifying the ships in Death Star as being Executors, given the amount don't add up, the Executor was not built at KDY (which these were said to be), and they only carried one heavy gun battery rather than multiple, which again, the Executor-class did. The fact they're referred to as Super-class is also not conclusive since anything from the Eclipse to the Sovereign to the Megador (all non-Executors) were called Super-class Star Destroyers at some point (in the Gravity well projector article on the official site and Invincible, respectively).

 

"To compensate for the destruction of the first Death Star at Yavin, the Emperor - urged on by Darth Vader - orders KDY engineer Lira Wessex to rush into production a new class of gargantuan ship." A fairly clear-cut statement I would think - but regardless of whether or not what quote from Complete Locations (or the earlier works subhumed into it) says, the canon is that the Executor was under construction prior to Yavin - I think we all agree on that.

4=/=4?

Laying aside for the moment that one of the Executors was, in fact, built at KDY - the whole Luskanya thing, remember? - the original Executor was the only one of its class built at Fondor. All others were built by KDY - four of which finished construction prior to the Battle of Hoth.

Graneet was talking about running the "big battery" as Hoberd runs "the battery" on the ISD Steel Talon. Not to mention that he didn't even know how big the ship was, indicating that he didn't have 'official' data on the ship anyways.

"The ship was colloquially known as a "Super Star Destroyer" because the Imperial Navy listed it as a "Super-class Star Destroyer" in budget requests to hide its true nature from the Imperial Senate. Even the ship's size was reported incorrectly to conceal its role from oversight committees. Although the official designation was changed by the time the Executor was operational, the phrase "Super Star Destroyer" stuck, and it was even applied to later vessels such as the Sovereign-class and Eclipse-class." - WOTC's Starship Battle Previews
It's been well-established since the days of WEG that the Sovereigns and Eclipses were considered SSDs as descendants of the Executors - and putting aside that the Megador has never been classed and could just as well be a latter-day variant of the Executor (which, as established in the BFC trilogy had visually distinctive traits from the earlier ones anyways) - those were all constructed and operational well after the Battle of Yavin.
But let's examine the scenario you're proposing anyways:
The Empire presents a new class of ships to the Senate called the Super-class Star Destroyer and deliberately report the wrong sizes for the ship to cover for the Executor-class Star Destroyer. However, having done so they decide to go ahead and build the ships anyways using the fake dimensions and fake name while they build the Executors with the real dimensions also hidden by the same fake name. They also build the two classes of ships in the same number at the same shipyards. Somehow the Senate fails to notice, especially considering that the "fake class" is now concealing nothing as it is now a real class, meaning that the original 'fake class' bit to begin with was completely redundant and serves no purpose as they evidently didn't need to hide the funding of the Executors in the first place.

 

Yes, it talks for the class going into production. The Swiftsure was a proof-of-concept ship made before the other Inexpugnables, that means it existed before the class went into production. Same with the Executor.

Fondor shipyards = Kuat Drive Yards, all of a sudden?
It says, four of these non-Executors were built at KDY. The Executor was not. Therefore, it doesn't add up.

Reading problem? I said the Executor was not built at Kuat. It was built at Fondor, and apparantly, the Scarl system before that.

Once again, the Executor was not built at Kuat. Ergo, no matter how many times you go on about any other ships, the Executor remains a non-KDY construction. Therefore, the Death Star quotes, which already describe a non-Executor design, is not referring to the Executor, no matter how you look at it.

I thought the TIE pilot was the clueless guy. The gunner even talks about hoping to get a commission on the next ship scheduled to roll of the KDY production lines, which thereby hints there's 4 under construction and one already finished. 5 ships from KDY, none of which is the Executor.

I don't recall the BFC saying anything about three additional engines. I do remember a mid-point additional shield projector. You'd think the former would be more noticable than a projector, especially given the depiction of the Intimidator as an Executor in one of the Fact Files.

What canon says, yes. I'm not involved in that, since I'm not a LFL employee.

Is this before or after the Sarlacc Project, which tried to build a 12km long flagship? Sorry, do continue.

Where does it say they built 8km ships called Super-class Star Destroyers? Star Cruisers of similar size maybe, but they aren't mentioned in a source until around Hoth (3 ABY, from ITWT and SW:CL).

They built the Executors after Yavin, which apparantly included the Lusankya. They also built some kind of ships at 8-10 times longer than an ISD before Yavin, however (from Death Star). And there's also Jerec's mention of how his ISD "wasn't among the largest Star Destroyers in the Imperial Navy" (Dark Forces: Soldier of the Empire), this around 1 BBY, at around the same time as the above book. Whatever heavy designs are being built besides the ISD a

 

He's refering to the fact that the Lusankya was originally also called Executor. The fact that a ship once called Executor was launched from and constructed at Kuat Drive Yards is canon. Since we have no date for this renaming, the Lusankya could have served for a short time under the name Executor, or it could have been renamed before it finished construction. It could also have been renamed when Isard took control of it.

 

The Coruscant and The Core Worlds sourcebook says its original name was Executor II, later renamed Lusankya.

Once again, the Executor was built at Fondor, not Kuat. Trying to explain it away using semantics doesn't work. Ultimately, there are other large warship designs also built in or around the same time frame, as demonstrated with Dark Forces: SFTE. There's also, ironically, a batch of Executor-lite ships seen in the Emperor's fleet in the comic adaption of TFU. The game only shows ISDs circling the Ex, but it doesn't prevent these other designs from taking part in the journey to the Scarl system.

There's also a blurb about "many warship classes built by KDY" that use the Executor's style of command tower, so any reference to other ships that don't fit whatever Executor timeline is being maintained, can easily be explained away with that, other designs of Star Destroyers or SSDs. We already know that individuals with money to spare can have their own SSD tailor-made, like Jerec (Dark Forces Saga), and the Moffs have enough autonomy to buy Venators for their personal fleets (TFU Campaign Guide). We also hear of Moffs getting more freedom right before the Battle of Yavin in how they deal with their own systems, and that the average Moff or Sector Commander had one or more SSDs within their sector forces (DESB), so tailor-made designs built on a contract for local forces, is a good solution. It doesn't have to be a rigid part of the overall Naval structure, if it's just a local variation in how a Moff decides to fill out his/her own forces.

Overall, there are no actual contradictions other than whatever source has the Executor designed and built only after Yavin.

 

Regardless of what Coruscant and the Core Worlds says, Isard's Revenge says it went simply by Executor. Anyway, it solves way more problems than it creates to have two ships flying around with the same name.

 

Executor is just Executor II minus the 'II'.
And no, it's not "regardless" of, by this the book gives a nice little retcon of why Isard, in a previous novel, calls it the Executor.